“Yes. But one thing I would like to ask of you. I am not sure if you can do it.” The French girl gave her friend an appealing look as she said, with a more natural childishness than she had shown Lucy before, “I am very lonely while Maman is ill. If you could come and pass the night with me—I would be grateful.”
“To-night, Michelle? Of course I will! I know how I can manage it. I’ll go home with Elizabeth—no one objects to that—and she can leave me at your house. It will be late, though. She can’t leave here before ten.”
“Oh, how glad I shall be of your company!” Michelle exclaimed, her face instantly brightening. Then her lip curved to a mocking smile as she added, “What could we do without that chère Boche, Elizabeth?”
“Laugh at her all you like,” said Lucy, unruffled. “I know her better than you.”
“I do not laugh at her,” Michelle protested. “But to be friend with her seems strange. Never I thought to trust in one of that country again.”
“Oh, Michelle, that’s not quite fair,” Lucy began, but her arguments died away on her lips. She had no right to lecture Michelle, who had seen the worst and would be more than human if the name of German were not hateful to her. “You’ll know before long that Elizabeth can be trusted,” she contented herself with saying.
“Oh, yes, sans doute,” answered Michelle, unconvinced, but anxious to make amends for her frankness. “You will come to-night then, Lucy? I will wait for you.”
The eagerness in her eyes made Lucy respond quickly, “I certainly will. I may be late, but that can’t be helped. I’m never sure when Elizabeth can get off.”
“Then au revoir, and thank you,” smiled Michelle, stopping on her way down the hall to carry a handful of wet clay to the American cowboy artist. He in turn presented her with a clay buffalo, quite lifelike with its lowered head and threatening horns. “Only mind you don’t break off the horns,” he cautioned.
“I’d ’a’ given that little Mamzel a fair treat if I hadn’t been skeered to try it,” he confided to Lucy, after Michelle’s departure. “I wanted to make her a little Boche soldier—square head, pig eyes and all—with one of our boys getting a good swipe at him with a bayonet. I’ll do it yet.”